1923-24-BBC overseas radio service first broadcast the
Chimes of Big Ben around the world.

1929- Guy Lombardo and his big band the Royal Canadians
first played Auld Lang Syne at midnight for New Years. Lombardo and his band
became synonymous with New Years until his death in the 1980s.

1940-41- Avant Garde artists John Sloan and Marcel Duchamp
break into the Washington Square Arch in and declare Greenwich Village the
Republic of New Bohemia. Like coool, daddy.

1943- Four hundred policemen are called out to control
frenzied crowds of bobbysoxers as Frank Sinatra played the Paramount Theater in
Times Square.

1946- The first Pismo Beach Clam Festival.

1947- Roy Rogers married Dale Evans.

1962- Romanoffs closed. One of the premier hot spots on the
Sunset Strip, it was the preferred hangout of Humphrey Bogart, who liked to
play chess in the afternoon with Nick Romanoff when he was between films.

1985- Singer Ricky Nelson died when his band's converted old
DC-9 airplane crashed near DeKalb, Texas. Nelson it was said had been living on
a steady diet of cheeseburgers and Snicker's bars.

1995- The last Calvin and Hobbes comic strip by Bill
Waterston

1999-2000 - The Y2K MANIA. While the world prepared to
celebrate the new century and the Third Millenium the American media whipped up
paranoia over a theory that the change from 1999-2000 would cause most
computers to crash. Planes would fall out of the sky, nuclear missiles would
launch themselves and marauders would rule the streets like something out of
Mad Max. The US Government spent $65 million to prepare for the crisis.But at midnight absolutely nothing of the
kind happened. Even older less sophisticated computers in Russia and China were
unaffected and everything ran normally. Meanwhile many of the US public stayed
home and watched the rest of the world have fun on television.

1941- “I Vant to be
Alone..” Film Star Greta Garbo announced she was retiring from motion
pictures and all public appearances. She made her disappearing act complete and
was only seen fleeting on the streets of New York until her death in the 1990s.

1963- T.V. game show "Let's Make a Deal" with
Monty Hall premieres.

1988- the Pixar short Tin
Toy released. The first CG short to win an Oscar. Until this win, Steve
Jobs was resisting his animation team making films. He was focused on getting
color graphics onto home computers.

1913- Cecil B.DeMille telegraphed his partners back in New
York:” Flagstaff no good for our purpose.
Have proceeded to California. Want authority to rent a barn in a place called
Hollywood for $75 a month.” His partner Sam Goldwyn cabled back: “ Rent barn on month to month basis. Do not
make long commitment.” DeMille began shooting the Squaw Man, the first
Hollywood Film.

1916-James Joyce’s novel “the Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man” published.

1964 – To create the first pilot of the TV series Star Trek,
the original filming model of the U.S.S. Enterprise was delivered by model
maker Rick Datin, Jr, based on the design created by Star Trek production
artist Walter “Matt” Jefferies.The
“miniature” was 11 feet long!

1965- First day shooting on Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: a
Space Odyssey. It was an indoor set at Elstree Studios in England, and the
first setup was the inspection of the excavation of the Monolith in the moon
crater Tycho.

1968- Animator Bill Tytla died at age 64, from complications
of a stroke.

1895- THE BIRTHDAY OF CINEMA- In Paris at the Grande Cafe
des Capuchines the Lumiere brothers combined Edison's kinetoscope using George
Eastman’s roll film with a magic lantern projector and showed a motion picture
to an audience in a theater. Back in the U.S. Thomas Edison thought the idea of
projecting film in a theater was foolish and would never catch on. They called
their device a Cinematograph, hence the word Cinema is born. The screening
included dancers and people leaving a factory but the biggest reaction out of
the audience was from shots of waves crashing on a rocky beach. The audience in
the front row jumped for fear of getting wet.

1897- Edmond Rostands famous play CYRANO DE BERGERAC
premiered in Paris. There really lived a poet-duelist in the 1640’s named
Cyrano de Bergerac-Servigan but little was known about him. Rostand created the
hopelessly lovesick big nosed hero who helps another man romance his Roxanne.

1928- Last recording of Ma Rainey, The Mother of the Blues.

1928- Louis Armstrong recorded West End Blues.

1944- ON THE TOWN, a musical written by Betty Comden &
Adolf Green and young composer Leonard Bernstein premiered in NY.

1871- The world’s first cat show
opened at the Crystal Palace in London.

1887- Beginning of the Sherlock
Holmes story the Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.

1904- PETER PAN, OR, THE BOY WHO
WOULDN’T GROW UP, a play by James M. Barrie, opened at the Duke of York Theatre
in London. Barrie reserved seats in the opening night performance for orphaned
children who laughed and cheered all night. Michael Llewelyn Davies, the little
boy Barrie befriended who was the basis for Pan, used to say:” I am not Peter
Pan. Mr Barrie is.”, He committed suicide in 1960 at age 75. James Barrie once
said to H.G. Wells:” It’s all right and good to write books, but can you wiggle
your ears?”

1927- Broadway musical
"ShowBoat" debuts at the Ziegfeld theater. Based on a story by Edna
Ferber, the music was written by Jerome Kern & Oscar Hammerstein. The play
made a star out of a tall black baritone named Paul Robeson.” Ol’ Man River..”

1935- Radio City Music Hall
opened. The Art Deco masterpiece was for many years the largest indoor theater in
the world, seating over 6,000.

1940- Al Jolson and Ruby Keeler
announced their separation.

1943- The movie The Song of
Bernadette premiered.

1947- The "Howdy-Doody Show”
debuted on NBC. Buffalo Bob, Howdy and Clarabell the Clown, also known as the
Puppet Playhouse.

1924- Baby Frances Gumm first appeared on a stage at 2 1/2
years old. Grown up she would change her name to Judy Garland.

1926- Young artist Al Hirschfeld had made his first regular
caricature for the Broadway Stage. A drawing of actor Sasha Guitry. A friend
took it to The New York Tribune and sold it. He figured here's a nifty way to
make a living, so soon he was selling to all the papers including the New York
Times.

He will keep doing caricatures of Broadway greats into the
millennium and became a legend himself. In the American Theater a Hirschfeld
caricature of you meant you had arrived and were a real star. At age 94 he
remarried and drew the cast of Ally McBeal for TV Guide. In 2003 he died just
shy of age 100, drawing to the end.

1938- Young playwright Thomas Williams moved from Saint
Louis to New Orleans and changed his name to Tennessee Williams.

1939- Walt Disney Animation moves from Hyperion to the new
Burbank Studio lot. The buildings are designed like hospital wards, so in case
he hits economic trouble, Disney could sell them to the planned St. Joseph's
Hospital across the street. Animator Ward Kimball said it was the first time he
worked in a studio where all the furniture matched. The old Hyperion Studio was
bulldozed in 1966, the year of Walt Disney’s death.

1941- Goofy cartoon, the Art of Self Defense, premiered.

1944- Tennessee Williams play the Glass Menagerie premiered
in Chicago.

1963- The death of Gorgeous George Wagner, the first
wrestler to adopt a flamboyant character.

1966- The first Kwanzaa Festival was organized by African
studies professor Dr Marulanga Karenga at Cal State Long Beach to celebrate
African-American culture.

1973- The horror film The Exorcist starring Linda Blair
premiered. Merry Christmas! Have some pea soup!

1541- After the Christmas services, Michelangelo’s fresco
The Last Judgement was unveiled, done for the Altar wall of the Sistine Chapel
beneath his famous ceiling.

1931-The first BBC World Service Network broadcast. An
address by King George V called "Around the Empire".

1937-NBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the legendary
Arturo Toscanini premieres with its first radio broadcast.

1955- Chuck Jone's 'One Froggy Evening' premiered. Director
Steven Spielberg called it the "Citizen Kane of Cartoons." If you
wonder why you never heard the old time ditty 'The Michigan Rag' anywhere else
but here, was because Chuck Jones & Mike Maltese wrote it specifically for
the cartoon.

1977- Charlie Chaplin died quietly in his sleep at Vevey,
Switzerland. He was 86.

1980- Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns finished reading Simon
Schaara’s novel about the Battle of Gettysburg called The Killer Angels. He
tells his father he is inspired to make a documentary about the Civil War. The
Civil War took six years to make and ran in 1990, but it was one of the most
popular documentary films in the US and redefined the medium of documentary
filmmaking.